Clattering Sparrows (15 page)

“My father’s sole desire was that his children further their education by attending the university in Kiev. He so desperately wanted us to learn a trade. He viewed farming as a discouraging way of life that allowed only a meager existence at best. My brothers weren’t interested in going to school, but I had a thirst for knowledge that was unquenchable. My father often spoke to me about his relatives that had immigrated to America, but it was not until after my mother died, that he confided in me that he was Jewish and what had befallen his family. He urged me to learn to read and write English at the university so that perhaps we could someday locate his younger brother.

“In February 1955, I was on leave from the university to see my father who had taken ill. Shortly after my mother’s passing, my oldest brother ran off to Rovna to join the Red Army, and we never heard from him again. My younger brother worked the farm with my father, but when he fell ill, Yuri found himself unable to care for him, and he urged me to return home.

“On my very first evening home as I sat quietly reading after supper, the loud drone of an airplane passed overhead. It was quite unusual for a plane to fly so low since there were no landing strips nearby and our farm was somewhat near the mountains, but as the sound of the engine faded in the night, I gave it no further thought and continued with my studies. I was so absorbed in the book I was reading that I failed to notice how late it had grown. Glancing at the clock and seeing that it was almost midnight, I decided to turn in. It had been a long day for me, and since Yuri had gone to bed earlier, I opened the door to let our dog Stoli out before retiring. As I gathered my books and papers and began turning off the lights, I heard the dog’s familiar scratching on the door to be let in.

“I opened the door, but Stoli did not want to come in, and he appeared agitated. It was very cold out, and the fields were deeply covered with several weeks’ accumulation of snow. Normally he couldn’t get back into the house soon enough. When I tried to pull him in, he grabbed at my skirt trying to get me to follow him, all the while continually barking. Not wanting to awaken my father and brother, I quickly put on my boots, grabbed my coat, and closing the door behind me, I followed him to a snow embankment approximately 100 yards from the house. There in the snow lay a man. He was unconscious. At first glance, I noticed that his clothing seemed to be too lightweight for the weather, and he wasn’t wearing gloves or a hat. There had been no new snow for several days, and yet there were no tracks in the existing snow other than the dog’s and mine. I couldn’t fathom how he got there.

“Running hurriedly back to the farmhouse, I woke Yuri. We retrieved a small sled from the barn, and set out to rescue the man and bring him indoors as quickly as possible. If we left him there overnight, he would surely freeze to death. Temperatures in the mountains had been below zero for weeks.

“My brother was quite concerned who he might be. There were no markings on his clothing. He wore a short heavy leather jacket, dark pants, and a light colored shirt. He wasn’t bleeding and no broken bones were apparent, but he was unconscious, and we were unable to rouse him. We removed his jacket, his shoes, and his belt, and I covered him with several blankets. His breathing was even though labored, and I remained at his side during the night, dozing on and off.

“In the morning there had been no change. As I lifted his head to adjust the pillow, I noticed a metal chain around his neck. Easing it out of his shirt, I learned who our guest was.

“The chain held a circular metal tag stamped with a last and first name, a series of numbers, the words United States Navy, and the initials B and C. I quickly removed the American’s military dog tag. I didn’t know how my brother would react, and I certainly didn’t want to get involved with the authorities.

“It was then that I thought to check the pockets of his jacket. Deep in the recesses of an inside pocket that rested against his heart when worn, I pulled out the picture of a young girl. She looked to be my age with light hair. She was smiling, and a dimple showed in her right cheek. My first thought was that she was very pretty and very young.

“I busied myself the remainder of the day doing housework and reading my school books, stopping only long enough to check on both my father and the man. Yuri went into the town of Prypiat to see if there was talk about anything that would explain the stranger in our midst. There was none.

“I prepared a light broth for my father, and sat down to dinner with Yuri. He was anxious about the man, and only agreed to let him stay because of our farm’s remote location, and because we simply didn’t know what to do with him. Visitors to our rural farmhouse were rare and far between, especially during the long, cold winter months. As we ate, we heard moaning sounds coming from the stranger’s room. Entering the room, we found him awake. Staring at one another, he said, “Where am I?” Who are you?” Yuri did not understand. Our visitor spoke English.

“He was on the whole unhurt but complained of soreness in his back and shoulders. He spoke only in English, and he had no memory of who he was, where he was from, or how he ended up in a snow embankment in Prypiat, Ukraine.

“I assured him that he must have sustained trauma to his head, and surely his memory would return in time. Each day he continued to grow stronger, and one afternoon when Yuri had gone into town, I showed him the metal tag I had removed from his neck and the picture of the young girl. He recognized neither. For the next thirty years, the dog tag and picture would remain hidden but not forgotten among my belongings. I never showed them to anyone.

“For the remainder of the winter, my father improved but remained frail, and Yuri and I explained to him how we had found Josef. We couldn’t continue to refer to him as “the man” or “the stranger” so we named him Josef. I decided against suggesting the name on the metal tag I had removed from his neck, since I hadn’t confided in Yuri when I found it.

“As Josef improved, I began teaching him to speak Ukrainian and he learned quickly. At first he only knew simple words, but before long he became my star pupil and picked up the language with ease. He became stronger as spring arrived, and with my father still unable to work, Yuri accepted Josef’s offer to help put in the crops. Yuri taught him how to prepare the soil, and sow the seed, and in the process they became quite close. Once they were able to communicate with one another, they became good friends.

“Most of the time, we didn’t think about Josef’s memory loss, and it concerned me more than it did him. I constantly wondered about the girl in the picture, his family, and if anyone was searching for him. From time to time, I would ask if he had dreams or flashbacks to another time and place, but his response was always “No.”

“We were both young, approximately the same age, and together constantly. Inevitably we fell in love. We were married in the small Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the town of Prypiat. Josef took the surname of Petrova and we became a family. Our son Nikolai was born just ten months later and Alexi the following year.

“When my father died, Yuri left the farm. He had stayed all those years and never pursued a life of his own. He was older than most of the students, but he went to Kiev and enrolled in the university where he met a younger woman and fell in love. They ultimately married after finishing their studies, and they chose to remain in Kiev working for the Ukrainian government.

“The years passed with Josef working the farm. Our sons and I would help put in the crops each year and then again when they were harvested. In the mid-1970s, construction began on the Chernobyl plant. Shortly after we were married, I had returned to school and finished my studies earning my degree in engineering. When the first reactor was commissioned in 1977, I was among the initial group of workers when the plant opened.

“From 1977 to 1986 our lives improved significantly. Our boys were at the university in Kiev, Josef was running the farm, and my job at the plant provided us with a security we had never before experienced. We made considerable improvements to our house, enlarged the barn, and upgraded our farm equipment which allowed us to increase the size of our crops.

“Josef was fine and quite healthy, but his memory had never returned. One day while working in the barn, two months prior to the Chernobyl incident, he hit his head on a low beam. Dazed for a moment, his head soon cleared, but he was left with a slight lingering headache. He mentioned to me what had happened at dinner that evening. We thought nothing more of it at the time, but in the following weeks, leading up to the accident, he began suffering from severe headaches, and his sleep became restless.

“Asleep when the reactor exploded, we were both jolted awake by the enormous blast. As we ran outside and into the fields to see what happened, pillars of smoke and flames filled the sky as far as the eye could see. Josef was running far ahead of me across the field when two more simultaneous explosions knocked him to the ground. As I caught up to him and helped him back to the house, he held his head and seemed to be in excruciating pain, all the while mumbling incoherently.

“He lay unconscious for two days, and when he awoke he did not know where he was or who I was. Total chaos followed the plant disaster, and there was no help to be had. Our sons were not allowed to travel home because of the contamination, leaving Josef and me alone at the farm for over two weeks. He soon came to realize who I was and what had happened, but he remained terribly confused fighting the demons in his head which told of another time and place.

“In the days immediately following the plant explosion, Josef’s memory started to return in bits and pieces. With nothing to do but wait for help, and instructed to remain indoors by the authorities, we awoke each morning with a mission. We began with as far back as Josef could remember in his childhood, and day by day we traced and retraced, year by year, leading up to the last thing he remembered—flying out of the clouds and staring straight into the Carpathian Mountains.

“When Josef reached that final point, I retrieved the dog tag and picture and handed them to him. He began to sob uncontrollably. As I cradled him in my arms, my heart broke for all of us—for Josef, for me, for our boys, but mainly for the girl in the picture.

“By the time help arrived it was to notify us that we were facing mandatory evacuation to unknown destinations. Although Kiev was in the path of the heaviest contamination, I pleaded with the officials to allow us to travel there to be with family, citing that Josef was not well, and that I wanted to get him to a hospital. Yuri was there and so were our sons. At last they relented. Taken by bus, we finally reached Nikolai and Alexi exactly one month after the accident. Relocated to Kiev, we moved into the tiny apartment with our sons.

“Had Josef’s memory returned at any other time in our lives, I truly believe we would have thought more rationally. As it was, we had lost everything, been uprooted from our home, and we were four people living in a tiny apartment barely big enough for one. We were fortunate to get a larger place as people started leaving the city, but we continued to live one day at a time, neither willing to look back, nor daring to look to the future.

“In the beginning, we didn’t know what course of action to take to solve our dilemma. The United States and the USSR, of which Ukraine is a part, were on friendlier terms than in past years, but we were apprehensive about approaching the authorities. I thought about trying to reach my father’s younger brother in America, but knowing only his name, I had no idea where to begin, and he in turn did not even know I existed. And there was the possibility that he was no longer alive.

“Yuri and his wife offered many suggestions, but Josef was unsure of his feelings. How could he return to a time and place he left over thirty years ago? For most of his fifty years, he didn’t know the other life existed. He couldn’t and wouldn’t leave me and our sons. Yuri and his wife were very supportive and helped us in any way they could, but they soon realized that the final decision had to be Josef’s. We were examined regularly by doctors at the hospital, but with other more pressing health concerns, Josef’s memory loss was not mentioned.

“One day, an article appeared in the paper announcing that the U.S. Energy Department was sending a team of three scientists, equipped with sophisticated instruments, to assess radiation levels in the Ukrainian Capital of Kiev, which is just south of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Prypiat. The article further stated that the team, which also included the U.S. Consul-Delegate and two officers from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, was due to arrive in October of 1986.

“When Yuri showed us the article, he urged us to get word to the officers from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow when they arrived. Josef and I agonized at length about what we should do. Suffering from constant nausea, body fatigue, and general overall illness, Josef remained mentally confused, although most of his memory had returned. The close quarters of our living conditions and his declining health continued to make it difficult for him to think clearly and sort things out in his mind.

Our situation remained dire, and Josef remained perplexed as to what course to take. Somehow, he just couldn’t bring himself to make the choice to search for his past. Sadly the decision was soon to be taken out of our hands. As he wrestled with his thoughts of what to do, Josef, who had been seen by doctors regularly since the accident, was at last properly diagnosed with severe radiation poisoning. Their procrastination and delay rendered all efforts to treat him ineffective, and after months of uncertainty and suffering, he died two weeks before the American team of scientists arrived.